Civilizations

by Laurent Binet

  The guards – Mexicans armed with lances, their heads covered with feathered helmets – refused to answer their questions.

  After a long time, they were ushered into a vast room where an enormous iron chandelier hung menacingly above their heads.

  Before them stood a man with his back to them. He wore a black beret. In front of him was a solid wood table with papers scattered over it. The man was staring out of the window, which overlooked the port. At this hour of the day (and at pretty much every other hour of the day as well), the docks were aswarm with porters moving goods this way and that.

  Cervantes elbowed the Greek: he had spotted his friend’s paintings, piled up in a corner of the room.

  Without turning around the man spoke: ‘You may thank your protector, who brought me your artworks, and God, who has granted you a certain talent.’

  They could tell from the man’s imperious tone that he must be an important person. And indeed he was. It was Admiral Coligny.

  When he finally turned around, he gathered up the papers from the table and waved them under Cervantes’s nose: ‘A conversation between talking dogs? Very amusing. And that com- edy of the miraculous altarpiece … Have you read it, Monsieur the Artist? No? Let me summarise the story for you: two skilful charlatans persuade some villagers that they have an enchanted altarpiece whose treasures can only be seen by old Christians with pure blood, free of all Jewish or Moorish antecedents. Of course, it is all a trick. But what do you think happens? A miracle! Every villager goes into ecstasies of admiration over the altarpiece’s supposed wonders.’

  The king of France’s first counsellor burst out laughing.

  ‘Isn’t that an amusing fable?’

  Neither the Greek nor Cervantes dared respond. The admiral stroked the thick gold chain that hung from his neck. ‘The great nations beyond the sea – the Mexican Empire, under whose protection the kingdom of France has been placed, and the western Inca Empire, which is its faithful ally, as well as ours – are looking for painters and writers, since painting and writing are two domains in which these formidable empires, for all their power, cannot yet boast of their superiority over those of the old world. You are not completely without talent, and that is why you will be leaving on the next ship, as part of the tribute that France owes to Mexico. Over there, you will be sold to the highest bidder, and you will be able to buy back your freedom, if God wills it.’ Then, with a gesture, he ordered the guards to take them away. The next day, they were aboard a galley loaded with wine and men, sailing towards Cuba.

  An old Spanish sailor had once told Cervantes: ‘If you want to learn to pray, go to sea.’ However, that crossing, which took only two moons, passed like a dream.

  Our two friends met a Genevan shoemaker, a Mexican merchant, a Jew from Salonika, a producer of Haitian tobacco, and a princess from Cholula who was travelling with her jaguar.

  All of them extolled the beauties of those lands beyond the sea, their infinite spaces, their generous natures, their abundant riches, and the possibilities of making one’s fortune there, just so long as one did not set out with any seditious plans.

  Then, one morning, the outline of Baracoa, the capital of Cuba and crossroads of the two worlds, appeared on the horizon. It was a city of palaces, palm trees and earth huts, where dogs spoke to parrots, where rich merchants came to sell their slaves and their wine, where the streets were fragrant with the scent of unknown fruits, where the naked Taíno nobility rode their Chilean thoroughbreds, wearing nothing but eighteen-row red pearl necklaces and crocodile-skin bracelets, where even the beggars resembled ancient dethroned kings, with masks and mirrors of copper and gold on their heads, where the shops were so overflowing with merchandise that, in the evenings, crested lizards ventured through the streets in search of crates that they could crack open. In that land, they spoke all languages, loved all women, prayed to all gods.

  The Greek, dazzled by this torrent of colours, his nerves set on edge by this Babylonian excess, started laughing like a madman.

  Looking up at the sky, forgetting his uncertain future, Cervantes marvelled at the red-headed vultures flying above him and thought that all those creatures were ghosts of this enchanted island. And so, undoubtedly, was he.

  ALSO BY LAURENT BINET

  The Seventh Function of Language

  HHhH

  A Note About the Author

  Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes. The Seventh Function of Language won the Prix du Roman Fnac and the Prix Interallié. Civilizations is a bestseller and won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française. You can sign up for email updates here.

  A Note About the Translator

  Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. His four novels have been translated into ten languages, and he has translated more than sixty books from the French, including Laurent Binet’s HHhH and Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny. You can sign up for email updates here

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraphs

  Part One: The Saga of Freydis Eriksdottir

  1. Erik

  2. Freydis

  3. The South

  4. The Land of the Dawn

  5. Cuba

  6. Chichen Itza

  7. Panama

  8. Lambayeque

  9. The Death of Freydis

  Part Two: The Journal of Christopher Columbus (fragments)

  Part Three: The Chronicles of Atahualpa

  1. The Fall of the Condor

  2. The Retreat

  3. The North

  4. Cuba

  5. Baracoa

  6. Huascar

  7. Lisbon

  8. The Land of the East

  9. Catalina

  10. The Incades, Book I, Verse 1

  11. The Tagus

  12. Toledo

  13. Maqueda

  14. Salamanca

  15. Charles

  16. Plaza de San Martin

  17. The Incades, Book I, Verse 11

  18. Granada

  19. Marguerite

  20. Sepúlveda

  21. The Incades, Book I, Verse 20

  22. The Alhambra

  23. Cadiz

  24. The Incades, Book I, Verse 24

  25. The Conquest

  26. The Incades, Book I, Verse 74

  27. Young Manco

  28. The Alcazar

  29. The Cortes

  30. Letter from More to Erasmus

  31. Letter from Erasmus to More

  32. Letter from More to Erasmus

  33. Letter from Erasmus to More

  34. Letter from Thomas More to Erasmus

  35. Letter from Erasmus to Thomas More

  36. Letter from Erasmus to King Henry VIII

  37. Elizabeth

  38. Valencia

  39. The Council

  40. Philip

  41. Tunis

  42. The Mita

  43. The Prince

  44. Algiers

  45. Flanders

  46. Gand

  47. Brussels

  48. Germany

  49. Little Johan

  50. The Twelve Articles of the Alsatian Peasantry

  51. Charlemagne

  52. Augsburg

  53. The Protestant Princes

  54. Wittenberg

  55. Luther

  56. The Dilemma

  57. The Castle Church

  58. The Church Doors

  59. The Ninety-Five Theses of the Sun

  60. The End of Luther

  61. The Coronation

  62. The Empire’s Ten Laws

  63. The Age of the Papa

  64. The Silence of Cuba

  65. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  66. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota

  67. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa


  68. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota

  69. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  70. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa

  71. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota

  72. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  73. Letter from Manco to Atahualpa

  74. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa

  75. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  76. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa

  77. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  78. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa

  79. Letter from Atahualpa to Jean de Saint-Mauris, Imperial Ambassador in France

  80. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota

  81. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  82. Letter from Ambassador Jean de Saint-Mauris to Atahualpa

  83. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa

  84. The Division of Bordeaux

  85. The Death of the Inca

  Part Four: The Adventures of Cervantes

  1. On the circumstances in which the young Miguel de Cervantes left Spain

  2. Which treats of young Cervantes’s meeting with the Greek Doménikos Theotokópoulos, who leads him to Venice

  3. Which treats of the most glorious affair ever seen in centuries past, the present century or in centuries to come, and which was also responsible for the great misfortune of poor Cervantes

  4. Of what followed young Cervantes’s misfortunes

  5. Of their adventures at sea, so extraordinary and unprecedented that no sailor or navigator in the entire world could have completed them with less peril to his person than did the valiant Cervantes and his friend the Greek

  6. Which treats of how Providence allowed Cervantes and the Greek to escape death and how they found refuge in a tower

  7. Of how Cervantes and the Greek met the owner of the tower and lived with him in great harmony for a time

  8. Of how Cervantes finally crossed the Ocean Sea

  Also by Laurent Binet

  A Note About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  120 Broadway, New York 10271

  Copyright © 2019 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle

  Translation copyright © 2021 by Sam Taylor

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in French in 2019 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle, France, as Civilizations

  English translation originally published in 2021 by Harvill Secker, Great Britain

  English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2021

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-60082-2

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  This book is supported by the Institut français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess program.

  * Illegible (chronicler’s note).